Permian Basin resident earns Texas Monthly bum steer award

Published 4:16 pm, Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Texas Monthly dished out its infamous bum steer awards this month, and an Ector County criminal earned a place among the state’s oddest news events and personalities.

The magazine annually offers a roast of “confused congressmen, greasy good-for-nothin’s and questionable quacks” in its January edition.

This year’s list was the fourth longest, and the magazine called Houston the “epicenter of the steerpocalypse.” But an Odessa man joined other featured bum steers after allegedly riding a lawnmower through a city intersection while under the influence of synthetic drugs.

The Odessa American reported in August that Oliver James McCracken, 35, admitted to smoking “potpourri” an hour before riding his lawnmower near the intersection of Farm-to-Market 1936 and 42nd Street.

Authorities found McCracken to be in possession of an incense substance called “Bang Bang,” along with a cardboard tube containing aluminum with a burned residue, according to his affidavit.

McCracken was charged with a class B misdemeanor and released from the Ector County Detention Center on bond that month, the Odessa American reported.